A Grand Sumo tournament is the event professional sumo is built around. The Japan Sumo Association stages six of them a year, each running 15 days, and these are the only days whose results count toward a wrestler’s rank. Everything else on the calendar — the regional tours, the exhibition bouts — is sumo without consequence. This guide covers what a tournament actually is, when and where the next ones are, how the 15 days run, and how a champion is decided.
📖 What you’ll learn
- What “Grand Sumo” means, and why it is not the name of one event
- The 2026 and 2027 tournament dates, venues and ranking-sheet release days
- Who fights on which days, and how many bouts a tournament holds
- How a champion is decided — and why there are six of them, not one
- What the Emperor’s Cup is, and what the winner is actually paid
What is a Grand Sumo tournament?
A Grand Sumo tournament, or honbasho, is one of the six official 15-day tournaments the Japan Sumo Association holds each year. It is the only sumo competition whose results count: every promotion, demotion and championship in professional sumo is decided by what happens across those 15 days.
The English name causes more confusion than it should. Grand Sumo is not the title of a particular event, the way the Super Bowl is. It is the standard rendering of ozumo — the professional sumo run by the Association, as distinct from the amateur, school and university sumo played all over Japan. A Grand Sumo tournament is therefore just a professional tournament, and there are exactly six a year: January, March, May, July, September and November.
What separates those 15 days from every other day a rikishi (a professional sumo wrestler) spends on the clay is consequence. A win moves him up the banzuke, the ranking sheet the Association redraws after every tournament. A loss moves him down. Nothing else does. The Association also runs regional tours and one-off ceremonial events through the year, and the wrestlers take them seriously, but a result there changes nothing.
| Grand Sumo tournament (honbasho) | Regional tour (jungyo) | Exhibition (hanazumo) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Status | Official competition | Touring show | Ceremonial event |
| Counts toward the ranking | Yes — only here | No | No |
| How often | 6 a year, 15 days each | Between tournaments | Occasional |
| Purpose | To rank the wrestlers | Outreach and fan access | Retirements, charity meets |
| Atmosphere | Tense, formal, long | Relaxed, close up | Celebratory |
The difference matters when you are choosing what to go and see. A tournament day is quiet, tense and very long. A regional tour day is the opposite — wrestlers sign autographs, pose for photographs, and the bouts run shorter and looser. Both are worth a ticket. Only one of them changes a career.
Q. What does “Grand Sumo” actually mean?
A. It is the usual English rendering of ozumo, the professional sumo staged by the Japan Sumo Association. It is not the title of a single competition. When the Association’s English site says “the September Grand Sumo Tournament,” it means the September honbasho — the fifth of the six tournaments held that year.
Q. Are there sumo events outside the six tournaments?
A. Yes. Between tournaments the Association runs jungyo, regional tours that take the wrestlers to smaller cities, and hanazumo, ceremonial events such as retirement bouts and charity meets. Neither counts toward the banzuke. Tickets are easier to get and the wrestlers are far more approachable, which is much of the appeal.
The 2026 and 2027 Grand Sumo tournament calendar
Six tournaments, three of them in Tokyo. The Association publishes the dates years ahead, so these are settled rather than provisional.
| Tournament | City and venue | 2026 | 2027 | Banzuke released (2026) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | Tokyo — Ryogoku Kokugikan | Jan 11 – Jan 25 | Jan 10 – Jan 24 | Dec 22, 2025 |
| March | Osaka — EDION Arena Osaka | Mar 8 – Mar 22 | Mar 14 – Mar 28 | Feb 24, 2026 |
| May | Tokyo — Ryogoku Kokugikan | May 10 – May 24 | May 9 – May 23 | Apr 27, 2026 |
| July | Nagoya — IG Arena | Jul 12 – Jul 26 | Jul 11 – Jul 25 | Jun 29, 2026 |
| September | Tokyo — Ryogoku Kokugikan | Sep 13 – Sep 27 | Sep 12 – Sep 26 | Aug 31, 2026 |
| November | Fukuoka — Fukuoka Kokusai Center | Nov 8 – Nov 22 | Nov 14 – Nov 28 | Oct 26, 2026 |
The last column is the one visitors overlook. The banzuke for a tournament is not published until roughly two weeks before it starts — August 31 for the September 2026 tournament, thirteen days before the first day. Advance tickets, meanwhile, go on sale about two months out: August 8 for that same tournament. The order is deliberate, and it has a consequence for you. You buy a seat before you know who is fighting, and before you know whether the wrestler you follow is still in the top division.
The Association’s schedule already runs to 2028 — the January 2028 tournament opens on January 9 — so a trip can be planned around a published date years in advance. First and final days fall on Sundays.
Q. Where is each Grand Sumo tournament held?
A. Tokyo hosts three — January, May and September — at the Ryogoku Kokugikan. Osaka’s EDION Arena takes March. Nagoya’s IG Arena took over the July tournament in 2026. The November tournament, often called the Fukuoka or Kyushu Grand Sumo tournament, is held at the Fukuoka Kokusai Center.
How the 15 days work: who fights, and how often
Not everyone fights every day. Six divisions take part in a tournament, and only the top two are on the clay for all 15 of them. The July 2026 ranking sheet carried 590 wrestlers, spread across 45 stables.
| Division | Wrestlers | Bouts per tournament | Salaried |
|---|---|---|---|
| Makuuchi (top) | 42 | 15 | Yes |
| Juryo | 28 | 15 | Yes |
| Makushita | 120 | 7 | No |
| Sandanme | 162 | 7 | No |
| Jonidan | 198 | 7 | No |
| Jonokuchi (entry) | 40 | 7 | No |
| Total | 590 | — | 70 salaried |
That split is the most useful thing to carry into a tournament. The 70 men in the top two divisions are sekitori: salaried, and fighting once on each of the 15 days against a different opponent chosen day by day. The 520 below them are officially still trainees, fight seven times, and so appear roughly every other day. Multiply it through and one tournament holds somewhere near 2,300 bouts — about 525 among the sekitori, and some 1,800 beneath them. Those are our own figures, worked out from the July 2026 ranking sheet; withdrawals, byes and the occasional extra bout move the total either way.
The 15 days have a shape of their own. Day one, shonichi, is the opening Sunday and the tensest session of the tournament. Day eight, nakabi, is the halfway mark, and by then the title race has usually narrowed to a handful of names. Day 15, senshuraku, is the closing Sunday: the championships are settled, the prizes are handed over, and the hall stays full to the end. None of this is ancient. The 15-day tournament has been fixed since May 1949, and the six-a-year calendar since 1958.
Q. How many sumo matches are there in one tournament?
A. Roughly 2,300, on our own count from the July 2026 ranking sheet. The top two divisions account for about 525 of them — 70 wrestlers fighting once a day for 15 days — and the four lower divisions supply the rest at seven bouts each. Withdrawals and byes shift the figure.
How a Grand Sumo champion is decided
By arithmetic. The wrestler with the best win-loss record in his division after day 15 takes the championship, or yusho. There is no bracket, no semi-final and no seeding: 13-2 beats 12-3, and that is the whole rule. If two or more finish level, they meet in a play-off immediately after the last scheduled bout of the final day. The Association’s own results pages carry a standing Play Off column for it.
And there is not one champion. There are six, one for each division, decided the same way on the same afternoon. Most English coverage reports only the top-division winner, which makes the rest of the tournament look like a warm-up act. It is not. Here is the full set from the July 2026 tournament.
| Division | Champion | Rank | Record | Stable |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Makuuchi | Aonishiki | West Sekiwake | 12-3 | Ajigawa |
| Juryo | Shonannoumi | East Juryo #6 | 11-4 | Takadagawa |
| Makushita | Asahifuji | East Makushita #11 | 6-1 | Isegahama |
| Sandanme | Tenshoyama | East Sandanme #3 | 7-0 | Tamanoi |
| Jonidan | Hakugetsuro | East Jonidan #6 | 7-0 | Asahiyama |
| Jonokuchi | Kakizoe | West Jonokuchi #16 | 7-0 | Ikazuchi |
Read the records column and the structure of the tournament shows through. A top-division title takes 12 or 13 wins out of 15; a lower-division title takes a clean 7-0, because seven bouts leave no room for a bad day. Aonishiki, who took the July title, is 22 and comes from Ukraine. He entered professional sumo in September 2023 and won the championship from sekiwake, the third-highest rank on the sheet.
Three further prizes, the sansho, go to wrestlers ranked at sekiwake or below: the Shukun-sho (Outstanding Performance Award), the Kanto-sho (Fighting Spirit Prize) and the Gino-sho (Technique Prize). They are not awarded on record alone, and the July 2026 tournament shows how far that principle stretches. The Outstanding Performance Award went to Fujinokawa, East Maegashira #1, who finished 8-7 — one win above break-even. Three wrestlers shared the Fighting Spirit Prize that tournament, and Aonishiki added the Technique Prize to his championship.
For everyone outside the title race, the number that matters is eight. A sekitori who wins eight of his 15 has kachikoshi, a winning record, and rises on the next ranking sheet. Seven or fewer is makekoshi, and he falls. In the four lower divisions the same line sits at four wins from seven. That single threshold is what most of the bouts on any given day are actually about. It is also why a wrestler standing at 7-7 on the final day repays close watching.
Q. Who is the current Grand Sumo champion?
A. Aonishiki won the July 2026 top-division championship with a 12-3 record, fighting from West Sekiwake for Ajigawa stable, and took the Technique Prize as well. The title is contested six times a year, so check the Japan Sumo Association’s Tournament Champions page for the holder as of today.
Q. Do the rankings change after every tournament?
A. Yes. The Association’s ranking committee meets after the final day and redraws the entire banzuke from top to bottom, then publishes it about two weeks before the next tournament. Two identical winning records do not always earn the same promotion — the rank a wrestler held while compiling it counts too.
The Emperor’s Cup, and what the winner takes home
The top-division champion is presented with the Emperor’s Cup on the final day. It is solid silver, 100.7 cm (3 ft 3 in) tall, 33 cm across the mouth and 29 kg (64 lb) — heavy enough that lifting it is visibly work. He does not keep it. The cup is passed on: he returns it on the opening day of the next tournament and is later given a smaller silver replica of his own. His ring name is engraved on a plate fixed to the base, and the base holds 80 plates. When it fills, the oldest are taken off and mounted in a frame.
Its origin is usually given as 1926, which is half right. Prize money from a 1925 exhibition before the then-Prince Regent paid for a cup, and that cup was awarded from the 1926 spring tournament. Its chrysanthemum crest then fell foul of the regulations governing imperial crests, and the cup was melted down. A replacement, with the crest replaced by a plain chrysanthemum flower and the name shortened, has been presented since the summer tournament of 1927. That, according to the Sumo Museum, is the cup handed over today.
The money attached to it has moved more recently. The top-division championship is currently worth ¥10 million (approx. US$65,000), and from the January 2027 tournament it doubles to ¥20 million (approx. US$130,000); the three sansho prizes rise from ¥2 million to ¥3 million. The Association announced the change on July 30, 2026, alongside higher monthly salaries for ranked wrestlers and the first ticket price rise since 2020, which applies to the Tokyo and Osaka tournaments only.
Money also moves bout by bout. Sponsors attach kensho banners to individual top-division matches — the banners are paraded around the ring beforehand — at ¥70,000 each, and the winner takes an envelope for every banner on his bout. Only ¥10,000 of each reaches him as cash at ringside; the rest is held back against tax and administration. He accepts the envelopes with three chops of the hand, right, left and centre, which is by tradition an offering to the gods of the ring.
Q. How much does a sumo champion actually win?
A. ¥10 million (approx. US$65,000) for the top-division title today, doubling to ¥20 million from January 2027. The five lower divisions carry smaller prizes. Sponsor envelopes are paid separately, bout by bout, and a winning record also raises the career pay a salaried wrestler draws for the rest of his time in the ring.
Going to a Grand Sumo tournament: the day, and the tickets
A tournament day starts far earlier than most visitors expect, and the wrestlers you came to see appear last. Doors open in the morning, the lowest division goes first, and the hall fills gradually through the afternoon.
Arriving at opening is not a wasted morning. The hall is close to empty, the seats near the ring are quiet, and the lower-division bouts are quick and often the most technically open of the day. From about 2:40 p.m. the salaried ranks take over and the building starts to sound different. The last bout, the musubi no ichiban, pairs the highest-ranked wrestlers available and lands around 6:00 p.m., after which one wrestler performs the yumitorishiki, a bow-twirling ceremony, and the day closes. On the final day only, the six wrestlers holding the three ranks below yokozuna step up together for the sanyaku soroibumi before the last three bouts, and the award ceremony follows the final match.
Tickets, not the schedule, are the difficult part. Popular days at the Tokyo tournament have sold out on the first day of general sale, and the Association’s English site sells through a single official channel. We have set out the on-sale dates, seat types, prices and the traps in a separate guide: how to buy sumo tickets in Japan.
Q. What time should I arrive if I go?
A. It depends what you want. Arrive at opening for a full day and an almost empty hall in the morning. If you only want the top division, arrive by about 2:30 p.m. — that gives you the Juryo ring-entering ceremony, both ring-entering ceremonies for the top division, and every makuuchi bout.
Summary
A Grand Sumo tournament is the whole of professional sumo compressed into 15 days, six times a year.
- Six a year, 15 days each, in January, March, May, July, September and November — three in Tokyo, one each in Osaka, Nagoya and Fukuoka
- Only these results count. Regional tours and exhibitions change nothing on the ranking sheet
- The top two divisions fight all 15 days; the four below them fight seven times. Roughly 2,300 bouts in all
- Six champions, not one — the best record in each division, with a play-off if two finish level
- The Emperor’s Cup goes to the top-division winner, along with ¥10 million, doubling to ¥20 million from January 2027
If you are new to the sport, start with what sumo is and how a bout is won, then read about the wrestlers themselves and the yokozuna rank at the top of the sheet.
Six tournaments a year is not many. A wrestler gets ninety bouts in a good year to prove where he belongs. The sheet that judges him is then redrawn from scratch, by a committee, on a single piece of paper. That is a slow way to run a sport. It is also why a fortnight in a sumo hall feels less like a season than like a verdict read out over fifteen days.
